Al Qaeda's Man Gets Sea Sick

The 1998 African embassy bomb suspect lawyers up in New York.

Updated Oct. 16, 2013 7:07 p.m. ET

Fighting al Qaeda, the Obama Administration has been inspired (see Abbottabad, 2011) and foolish (promising to close Guantanamo by 2010). But it has never been both at once before Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqui came along last week.

The gutsy call came October 5 in Tripoli, Libya. In broad daylight, Delta Force soldiers grabbed Osama bin Laden's former confidant. The Administration quickly moved him aboard the USS San Antonio in international waters rather than add him to the prisoner population at Guantanamo. At least this...